


Five Times K-Unit Saw Yassen and One Time They Didn't

by theyre_my_babies



Series: Alex Rider: Five Times Alex and Yassen Were In Love [3]
Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alex Rider is a Princess, Asexual Yassen Gregorovich, Bisexual Alex Rider, Career-Ending Injury, Drama, Feelings, In Love, M/M, Permanent Injury, Secrets, mention of Disneyland Man-Bun, sentimental russian angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4636089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyre_my_babies/pseuds/theyre_my_babies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>K-Unit meets Yassen Gregorovich, and then he keeps popping up. (They have varying opinions on his existence.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times K-Unit Saw Yassen and One Time They Didn't

1.

"Reed, if you don't stop trying to pet Yassen, he will shred your arms," Alex warned.

Reed pouted. "This is the only cat in the universe that doesn't like me," he announced, finally releasing Yassen, who bounded out of the room.

"Don't lie, Reed," William said. "That Bengal in August? That cat _hated_ you."

Reed tilted his head in consideration. "The August Bengal was possessed by the devil and doesn't count," he decided.

"Hey, Ben," Jason said, poking his head through the door from the kitchen, "or Alex, probably. Why is there a graphic novel on your stove. Neither of you reads graphic novels. Also, can I move it, because if I can't, you're not getting butterbeer lattes."

Alex and Ben glanced at each other.

"It's my... boyfriend's," Alex said cautiously. "It's a manga, he's reading them to work on his Japanese comprehension. He was here earlier, probably forgot about it on his way out. Yeah, you can move it."

While Jason returned to the kitchen and got working on drinks, Alex became the center of attention. Reed and David leaned in curiously, and even William, who had barely met Alex, looked interested.

"You have a _boyfriend_?" Reed asked eagerly. "And you didn't tell us?"

Alex groaned, putting his face in his hands. "It's complicated," he said.

Ben raised an eyebrow. "Earlier you told me he was your 'supreme enemy who you sometimes make out with in secret.'"

"It's more hardcore!" Alex insisted. "Also, it's true. We don't go on dates, or anything. I am tragic teenage James Bond and he is my Bond villain girl."

"Tell us about him," David suggested.

Alex shrugged. "He's… Well, he’s attractive. Dirty blonde. He’s brilliant, he’s honest. He’s easy to talk with. He pushes me to be better, to do more. He doesn’t try to push me to do things I don’t want to. He’s-”

"-right there," Ben interjected, pointing behind Alex at the window.

Startled, Alex turned in his chair, and Reed and David looked up and past him, to see that Yassen Gregorovich was indeed outside the window. William, because of his position in the room, had also already seen him. Yassen had apparently scaled the building, up three floors, and was looking inside the apartment, poised to knock on the window.

Alex pushed out of his chair and opened the window.

"You left a book," Alex said as Yassen climbed inside.

Yassen panned around the room, from Ben, to William, to David, to Reed. "I know," he said, without looking at Alex. "My business in town was taken care of efficiently enough that I felt there was sufficient time for me to come back and get it before I had to leave.”

“Probably also you felt there was sufficient time to do inappropriate things with Alex,” Ben muttered, low-key side-glaring at Yassen.

Alex blinked and steadfastly refused to look anywhere but at Yassen, and Yassen glanced at Ben again and finally glanced at Alex, before settling his gaze on Ben.

“I’d call what your government does with him ‘inappropriate’ before I’d call what I do with him that,” Yassen said cuttingly.

_Burn._

Alex risked a glance around the room and turned, arms folded across his chest defensively. “We were alone for a week in Rome and I haven’t even been deflowered yet,” he whined pleadingly at Ben.

Ben’s eyes widened, cheeks reddened, and he dropped his face to his hands.

“That’s - that’s probably not the worst thing that could have just come out of your mouth,” David choked out.

Reed was still blinking, William was blank-faced, and Yassen was discreetly inching towards Alex to put an arm around his back.

“I feel like I’m in the Shrieking Shack at the end of _Prisoner of Azkaban_ ,” Ben mumbled, muffled into his palms.

Jason chose that moment to open the kitchen door. He opened his mouth to say something, saw Yassen, closed his mouth, and narrowed his eyes.

“ _You_.”

_Ho shit._

Yassen looked Jason up and down, but no recognition passed over his face. “Yes?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jason’s eyes darted quickly around the room, then back to Yassen. “Why the fuck has none of you idiots pulled a gun on this fucker yet?” he growled lowly.

“That’s a bit harsh,” Reed said.

Alex groaned and shifted closer to Yassen's still-extended arm. "I _did_ pull a gun on him once, it didn't end well."

Yassen finally hooked his arm around Alex's waist. "You got out alive. It ended well enough for me."

"What the _hell_ ," Jason said.

"So apparently this is Alex's supreme enemy who he sometimes makes out with in secret," William informed him, sounding amused. Yassen glanced at them, dismissed them, and went back to pointless bickering with Alex. "Also apparently, you know who he is and are massively angry at him."

"He's an assassin," Jason fumed. "Yassen Gregorovich. We crossed paths a couple times, back in - Ben, what the hell. You knew about this?"

Ben glanced at Alex and Yassen and shrugged. "I just found out earlier today. Believe me, I was about as disturbed as you, but..." He gestured to where Yassen had moved on to fussing over a scar on the back of Alex's neck that he'd discovered in the kitchen that afternoon.

As a group, Ben, Jason, David, Reed, and William turned to watch Yassen and Alex. It seemed strange that an assassin would be so protective of Alex Rider, teenage spy extraordinaire, but Ben had a adopted a policy of 'Alex needs all the caring adults he can get and that includes literal assassins who want to make out with him,' and seeing the intimacy between the two and knowing who they were and what they could do was simultaneously reassuring and terrifying.

"Oh, Yassen," Alex said suddenly. "I don't think you've met all of K-Unit. The asshole who wants to shoot you is Jason, as you apparently know. You know Ben. The asshole who doesn't want to shoot you is Reed, and this bitch over here who thinks there are worse things than me not getting laid is David. You might recognize William."

Yassen and William looked at each other.

"Never heard of him," Yassen said.

2.

“You’re not getting through this doorway,” Wolf warned. He hadn’t expected to see Yassen Gregorovich in Maputo, but then, he hadn’t expected to run into an active, top-secret MI6 operation, either.

“I have orders to kill anyone in my way,” Yassen commented, casually pointing his handgun at Wolf’s face.

Wolf glared at him, unmoving. “Don’t threaten me. We both know I've seen worse,” he growled.

“Not threatening you,” Yassen said. “We’re on the same side.”

Wolf snorted. "Oh, are we?”

Yassen lowered his gun to point at the ground in front of Wolf’s feet. “Sasha’s side.”

“Who-”

“You have, in the past, protected him,” Yassen said. “And it is only so that you may continue to do so that I do not kill you where you stand. But…”

Just as Wolf tensed, he heard three gunshots, and felt their impact horribly: one in his left elbow - the arm holding the gun - and one in each knee.

“You _are_ an asshole.” The assassin walked past him.

And fade to black.

3.

“ _You_ ," Reed said in a line at a café in Belgium, exactly the way Jason had said it in Alex and Ben's apartment.

The assassin raised an eyebrow.

"What the _fuck_ ," Reed continued. "You and- and then- and what the fuck-"

"There is a young woman with two children less than ten feet away," Yassen said quietly. "You _might_ refrain from using that kind of language so loudly."

Reed glanced at the mentioned bystanders - the young woman was glaring at him - and stared at Yassen.

" _You_ might refrain from _shooting your boyfriend’s friends_ ,” Reed said in a much lower voice than before, though his glare was still daggers in Yassen’s direction.

Yassen sighed. “My orders were to kill anyone in my way, and he was. What does it tell you when an assassin cannot shoot straight?” He levelled his gaze at Reed. “It tells you that they’re not really trying.”

4.

"How did you find me?" Wintergreen demanded, knife to David's throat.

David rolled his eyes. "Oh, I just listened for the sound of complete and utter betrayal and followed that," he sighed airily. "You're so careless."

"I'm not. You're a creep," Wintergreen accused.

"Wintergreen, stand down," a voice commanded calmly from the shadows. "He won't do anything."

"Gregorovich," David greeted, the slightest hint of a glare on his face.

"What guarantee do we have that he won't go running to get us in trouble as soon as I let him go?" Wintergreen demanded.

" _I_ vouch for him. That should be enough for you," the assassin said. "Or are you questioning me? I don't have to work with you, if you are."

Wintergreen stared at him, then turned to glare at David. "Be _damn_ glad for this man, because he just saved your life," Wintergreen growled, and released him. 

5.

“For being your boyfriend, Alex talks a lot of shit about you,” Ben said, barely glancing away from his book as Yassen climbed through the open window of his Los Angeles hotel room. “Also, if you’re looking for him, he left to go meet up with - a friend, I think? I didn’t know he had friends here.”

Yassen chuckled and settled on the rumpled sheets of Alex’s bed, facing Ben. “Yes, I believe he knew Tim was here this week. But I am not looking for him.” He broke his position facing Ben and laid face-down on the bed, burying his face in Alex’s pillow. “And we are not - boyfriends. We are ‘supreme enemies who sometimes make out in secret.’”

For a few long minutes, Ben ignored Yassen and continued reading as Yassen breathed on Alex’s pillow.

“Hunter should have let me die in the Amazon,” Yassen eventually murmured, turning his head to the side.

Ben raised an eyebrow, but didn’t turn from his book. “Why’s that?”

“He would be so disappointed in what I have become. He did not want me to be a killer.” Yassen rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, clutching a pillow to his chest. “When he told me that, I thought it was just - because he wanted me out of the way. But if it had been that, he would have killed me. I didn’t - I did not understand until Sayle was pointing a gun at Alex on the roof, and Alex looked just like him, I knew he was Hunter’s son and they had dragged him into this world-” Yassen cut himself off and turned onto his side, facing towards Ben but staring past him at the bland, beige walls. “I should leave. I should leave here, never see him again. I love him and all I know is how to hurt him.”

Ben had long stopped reading, but finally, he closed his book and set it to the side and looked towards Yassen. “Well, that’s stupid,” he said.

Yassen’s eyes raised to Ben’s face.

“I don’t know if you remember, but you’ve saved his life,” Ben said matter-of-factly. “If it weren’t for you he’d be dead a hundred times over, and that’s just the times that I know about. You’ve been more honest with him and kinder to him than almost the entire population of Britain. Out of all the people out there who should, who _would_ be 'good' or 'safe' for him, he has you. He _wants_ you. He loves you.

“And you know what? You’re a criminal. You’re dangerous. You’re not _nice_ , for sure. But I believe that you are good for him. I _know_ that you love him. You make him happy in ways that no one else does. For all the shit he talks on you, he gets back from seeing you and he has this little smile on his face. I should hate you, but I can’t, because as crazy as it is, you might actually be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.” Ben shook his head. “You’re stuck with us all now, whether you like it or not.”

And 1.

"Jason _hates_ being grounded," Alex said to his supposedly empty bedroom. "They were going to give him a desk job, since you made sure he wouldn't be out in the field again, but he left, said he'd go crazy sitting around all day."

"He seems like the type," Yassen snorted, dropping down from the ceiling tiles above the bed and crawling under the covers with Alex.

Alex rolled his eyes as Yassen pushed him on his side and got comfortable against his back, Yassen’s bottom elbow going above his head so he could play with Alex’s hair.

“Your hair’s getting long,” Yassen noted, running a hand over it.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “I’ve been trying to decide whether to grow it out so I can put it in a man-bun or get it cut short. What do you think?”

“If you get a man-bun, I’ll blackmail Tim into doing one, and I’ll take you both to Disneyland,” Yassen said, chuckling.

Alex smiled. “That’s a yes on the man-bun, then. Hm, maybe they’ll start sending me on jobs as a girl, instead of an innocent teenager.”

“That ex-girlfriend of yours, she could teach you how to do makeup.”

“Sabina? Yeah. Or you could get that Talia bitch to teach you and _you_ could do my makeup.”

“Hm. Maybe I will ask her,” Yassen said. “I do like the long hair. It looks good on you.”

“Good. You can get out the knots when you’re done messing with it,” Alex snorted.

Yassen chuckled. “I had no idea I would be working so much in retirement.”

“Disney princess hair doesn’t maintain itself,” Alex said with a sniff.

“-wait, what do you mean ‘retirement’?”

Yassen’s fingers paused. “I’ve got one job I’ve been working on for a couple weeks, but it’ll be over next Monday at the latest. It’s the last one I’m taking. I’m retiring.”

Alex twisted his head around to stare at Yassen. “You - you never said anything about retiring.”

“I almost refused the job for Cray,” Yassen admitted, running a finger over the hair behind Alex’s ear. “There’s not a high life expectancy in our line of work. I have enough money put away to retire comfortably. I kept working after because I would have been very lost if I hadn’t. But now, I’ll have you, and the little family you have here. I have a reason to stay.”

“What are you going to do?” Alex asked. His voice was breathless - shocked, amazed. Yassen Gregorovich retiring from being an assassin was… sincerely not something he had ever thought of.

“Probably get a very mundane sort of job,” Yassen said, a small smile on his face. “There’s a bookstore down the street that I like. I might start a blog. I might write a book. Join the military, that might be a laugh. Work in security somewhere. Be a pilot, that was always something I wanted to do. Although - having died in an airplane once - I might reconsider that. I could get a _foodservice or retail_ job. I could _teach_. Can you imagine that? I could do anything, Alex.”

Alex slowly smiled, imagining. “Yeah. Yeah, you could.”

_It’ll be nice, having you around._

**Author's Note:**

> Alex is being a drama queen in 1. and Yassen understands that and rolls his eyes.
> 
> http://www.asexuality.org/home/


End file.
